


Shards

by Zerrat



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Action, Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Angst, Disney fusion, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-02
Updated: 2014-02-20
Packaged: 2018-01-10 22:15:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1165182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zerrat/pseuds/Zerrat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pacific Rim AU. Anna lost her parents when the Kaiju Hellfire attacked Arendelle, and lost her sister to the same attack in a very different way. Now grown up with a mind to settle the score with the Kaiju, she's going to need to resolve her issues with Elsa if she ever wants her shot at piloting a jaeger.</p><p>Currently on hiatus due to workload in other fandoms!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Doors

**Author's Note:**

> Done for my personal Femslash February challenge, in which I strive to post a ficlet a day. I absolutely love Pacific Rim and Frozen, so combining them? Fantastic. The Shards universe will take place as a whole lot of scenes, sometimes in order and sometimes not.
> 
> Unbeta'd due to time constraints of said challenge.

Anna approached the Shatterdome Ranger apartment with all the old trepidation she'd had as a kid. Elsa's door still loomed, still felt like some unbreachable barrier between them, still the reason she hated closed doors with an unreasonable passion. It was daunting, to the _extreme_ , but Anna couldn't let that deter her any longer. She wasn't some attention-starved child just needing acknowledgement from her only family now, she was a Ranger and she had a right to be in this Shatterdome. She had a _right_ to pilot that unnamed jaeger getting assembled in the launching bays.

She just needed Elsa to see that.

Anna resettled her shoulders, mentally bracing herself, before knocking on the solid metal door that separated her and her would-be co-pilot, the distant sister that seemed to all but hate her very presence.

 _God, if the PPDC got wind of my issues..._ Anna's train of thought petered out, listening to the sound of movement inside the room. Good, her sister was home, though that had never exactly meant Elsa would bother interacting with her. 

Finally, she heard gears shift, and the door opened up just an inch or so. Anna could see just a bit of the darkened room beyond, plus a sliver of Elsa's face as she checked over her visitor. 

"Hi," Anna said, a little surprised, considering that she'd expected to fight and yell for _that_ much. She heard Elsa sigh, just quietly, before opening the door more fully. 

"Anna," her sister said, her expression cool as she stood in the doorway. She was dressed down, her blonde hair caught in that braid and wearing a standard issue pair of trousers and tank top. Around her neck were the dogtags that showed her details and designation, and she could see the emblem of her lost jaeger, Dancing Spectre. 

It was also painfully clear Elsa wasn't about to invite Anna inside, wasn't going to make this whole thing easy. Anna's surprise faded into bitterness. 

_You never change. Well, I'm sick of it._

"Why did you say no?" Anna demanded, unable to keep the hot anger from her voice that her _sister_ would take away that jaeger from her. "Elsa -"

"Anna, you shouldn't _be_ here." Elsa's face was expressionless, as though she wasn't talking to someone she'd grown up with. Anna hated that she could so easily compartmentalise their relationship like that, that she could just continue to shut her out!

"It's not exactly like you gave me a choice! I matched you blow for blow in the Kwoon Training Room - you can't just say _no_ to that! And don't you dare try to tell me it's the Marshall's fault, because I have already spoken with him!"

Elsa said nothing to the tirade, as though she was sick of Anna's presence already. She hadn't even flinched at the accusations, simply maintaining that icy mask. The room behind her was cold and dark, and Anna shivered in spite of herself. 

_What happened when the Kaiju hit Arendelle?_ Anna asked herself for what had to be the thousandth time, wondering what had been so bad that she'd had to lose her sister along with her parents, too. 

"You can't just keep shutting me out! I thought we had a real _chance_ to make a difference out there!" Anna took a deep breath, trying to calm her anger but god it was hard. Out there, it seemed like every second Kaiju managed to take out another jaeger and its Rangers with it. A high Drift compatibility would make all the difference in a fight like that!

Elsa could see it, of course she could. She'd been involved in the PPDC for god only knew how long, she'd seen every side of the Ranger program and she'd Drifted with that partner of hers, too. Knowing how desperate it was now, how could Elsa be so selfish as to make it all about whatever happened to her?

Anna needed to help, she couldn't live with herself if she had to sit on the sidelines and watch people continue to get hurt. 

"Is it because you think I'll be a liability? Is it because you're too _good_ to partner with your sister?" Anna demanded of Elsa, her voice cracking with emotion because damnit this was hard, it didn't matter that she was angry. 

Maybe if Elsa hadn't done such a bang up job of leaving her behind all those years, then maybe they'd already be partners, taking the Kaiju out kill for kill. Maybe if Elsa had wanted an equal partner, maybe she shouldn't have ditched Anna for the program without so much as a word goodbye. 

_What did I ever do to deserve this?_

Finally, some pain showed in Elsa's eyes. At least Anna could be certain her sister was human after all. 

"Anna, please, just listen to me." Elsa's voice was low, almost urgent. "It's not safe, not with _me_ and you need to understand -"

"What is there to understand? Elsa -" Anna cut off, reaching forward to grasp her sister's shoulder. Elsa knocked her hands away, hard and forceful, and was it Anna's imagination or was there genuine distress in her eyes just then? 

Anna swallowed, frozen in place, her wrist aching from the strike, as Elsa's expression hardened once more. 

"We're done. My decision is final. The risk is too high, and the Marshall understands that." Elsa's blue eyes were cold. "Go back to the program and keep training. You'll find someone else that will... suffice."

"They won't be you." The Drift compatibility wouldn't be nearly the same, wouldn't create the sort of neural handshake they needed. Near enough wasn't good enough against the Kaiju, not anymore. 

Elsa closed her eyes, just for a moment, as she backed away from the door. "And that's a good thing."

The heave metal door swung closed and locked with a groan, and Anna was left staring at the outside one more. It didn't matter how many years had passed since the lonely nightmare of her childhood, seeing that door slam in her face made her feel exactly the same way. 

Elsa wasn't nearly as determined as Anna had feared, though. That look in her eyes, and her expression as she'd closed the door once more? What was going on there?

"This can't be the end," Anna told herself, pressing a hand to the ice-cold metal door. "I won't let you run anymore, Elsa."


	2. Cause

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anna still remembers exactly where she was when she found out Elsa was a jaeger pilot.

The PPDC propaganda enlistment poster was coming free from the corkboard it was stapled to, Anna noted wearily as she cleaned up another spill on the cafe's tiled floors. Someone was going to need to fix that, and usually, it was her. The thing had been there longer than she had worked there part time, and was an unofficial part of the decor of the run down Coronan shop. Anna had quickly come to appreciate that her current manager, David, was a bit of a jaeger groupie.

A lot of people _were_ these days, and given the larger than life, man-made-monsters that had stepped in between the Kaiju and the civilisations they seemed bent on destroying, a bit of hero-worship wasn't all that surprising. There was an image of unbeatable godliness some times, with the Rangers that felt more like celebrities than soldiers for the PPDC and the jaegers's image reflected in toys, art, in the culture of the world itself. 

There was probably a sociological thesis in the way humanity had adopted those machines and their pilots as completely as they had. Though, at just seventeen, Anna was still a number of years off needing it at all. It wasn't a bad thing to have at the back of her brain - she wasn't really sure where she'd go after high school, but university was always a thing and her parents would have wanted that, wouldn't they?

The idea didn't exactly fill her with enthusiasm.

As it was, she was barely nailing down this part time job at the cafe around the corner, and that was _with_ the unsubtle nudgings of her landlord, Merryweather. The woman didn't really understand the super complicated situation with her parents' estate and her remaining family, but she seemed nice enough. 

_She asks a lot of questions that I don't really know how to answer, though._ Things like plans for the future, plans for holidays... plans for the weekend... plans for anything...

Anna was still mopping the floor when the soccer game that David had playing flickered off and a newsfeed started up. All the sound in the busy cafe grounds to a halt as the news of the latest Kaiju attack broke, and Anna couldn't blame them. There was something horrifyingly compelling about watching a thousand foot metal monster take down an alien from the deep, and she leaned back against the drinks fridge, her own eyes glued to the screen. 

The attack had been intercepted just off the coast of the States by one of the newer jaegers. Anna wasn't all that familiar with the Mark classifications - not the way her manager was - but the robot was not nearly as imposing as a tank like Requiem Atlantis, and seemed built more for manoeuvrability than brute strength. 

It was _fast._ That much had quickly become clear as they watched the footage of the jaeger - Dancing Spectre, the reporter had informed them all - engaging the Kaiju in a whirl of blades. The whole fight had to have been severely edited, Anna thought, her barely able to remember to _blink_ let alone pry her eyes away from the screen. She knew enough about jaegers to remember that the last engagement with a Kaiju was over an hour long, and -

She nearly lost her hold on the mop when the footage showed the Kaiju's massive claws shredding the jaeger's shoulder armour, but that seemed to give the Rangers the opening they'd needed. They'd unleashed the chest-mounted plasma cannon right into the Kaiju's face, and when the monster's body finally fell to the ground, there wasn't much left of it but char and molten slag. 

In the background, Anna heard a few people whoop at the decisive victory, and slowly people felt safe enough to break their silence and go back to the simple tasks of living. 

Seeing proof of their safety from the Kaiju, proof that the PPDC could push back whatever monster the breach threw at them... That meant a lot to people. It meant that they could go home at night and smile for their children, make plans for the future. 

A few people were still watching the post-battle statement the PPDC usually released when a Kaiju incursion was finally halted. Anna listened to the vaguely reassuring words of the PPDC's Marshall, shouldering her mop and deciding to take it out back again. 

_"- at approximately four fifteen this morning, a Category Two Kaiju - codenamed Incisor - emerged from the Breach. At approximately eight forty, the Jaeger Dancing Spectre intercepted Incisor fifteen miles from the San Francisco and Rangers Arendelle and Cortes eliminated the target five miles from the coast -"_

That caught Anna's attention. 

_Arendelle? Arendelle was destroyed when Hellfire attacked, it's not there anymore._ Anna watched the screen again, watching the steadfast Marshall continue to read his lines for all the world to see, but that wasn't what she needed to see. 

_Ranger Arendelle._ If that was a surname, then Anna hadn't ever encountered it. 

When the Marshall's statement was done, the newsfeed flickered over to the Anchorage Shatterdome, where the pilots of the Dancing Spectre emerged from their jaeger. The feed was a little jerky, but Anna was able to get a good look at the suited-up pilots, their helmets removed as they pushed their way through the usual waiting crowd of jaeger flies and reporters desperate for a scoop. 

Two women. One with dark hair, dark skin and a ferocious smile, and the other with platinum blonde and a chilly expression.

Anna did drop the mop this time, and it fell from her suddenly slack hands to clatter on the cafe tiles. Normally she would have sprang to pick it up, apologised to nobody at all for the huge sound it made, but she couldn't breathe. She couldn't even _think._

 _Elsa,_ Anna's mind whispered for her, because there was no mistaking those features, so much like their mother's now. Every muscle in her body had gone so tight that it _trembled,_ and she could swear that the entire cafe would be able to hear her heart it was beating that loudly. 

"That's my sister," Anna told her manager numbly, just loud enough for him to hear over the sound of the milk frothing for his next order. "That blonde one. The Ranger. She's... my sister."

It felt surreal. Was she dreaming this? No, she smelt too much like coffee grinds for that, but _god_ she could scarcely believe it. For a moment she was worried she was going to have a guy and a camera crew jump out of the drinks fridge and yell "PSYCH" at her, but...

"That one?" David asked, craning his neck to see over the coffee machine and squinting at the screen. "Damn, Anna. You should introduce me sometime."

Anna shot him a look, but it held no feeling. She was still completely off-balance by the chance discovery. 

Elsa was a pilot. She was the pilot of _that_ jaeger, had apparently changed her surname to that of their dead home - whatever _that_ implied. Why hadn't she _told_ Anna? Why wouldn't she have said something?

Anna hadn't seen her in six years, not in person. They'd spoken once or twice on the phone, which had always been an absolute disaster of uncontrolled rambling on Anna's part and pained silence on Elsa's. Hell, couldn't Elsa have slipped that little tidbit into some of those stiff, detail-light emails she sent twice a year?

 _'Oh, and by the way, I'm a jaeger pilot, surprise!' It would have been **that** easy!_

Elsa was a _Ranger_. When had it happened? When had she _graduated?_ There was so much that Anna had missed thanks to whatever mess their relationship was. She stared up at the screen, an awful sense of hurt and yearning in her chest. She watched the way her sister's cool expression remained smooth, how it didn't even flicker at all the invasive questions being fired at her from the journalists. 

The dark-haired woman - Ranger Cortes or something, Anna didn't care when she was seeing Elsa for the first time in years - fielded most of the interview. That did seem a lot like the Elsa that had survived Arendelle's destruction and come back all... changed. Evasive, silent, walled-off, _cold._

But in spite of all that, Elsa was out there, making a difference, making sure another Arendelle didn't _happen_ again. While Anna had been wandering her way through school, not even bothering to make concrete plans of her own, Elsa had gone all the way through the Jaeger Program and...

Anna wanted that for herself too, the feeling taking root in her chest like a sudden weed. 

The best Drift partners, according to all the tabloids, were by blood. It was all based on the memories of the past, a meeting point of shared experience, and an alignment of their goals. If she got through the program too... maybe she'd be able to do the same as Elsa. 

Her gaze slid back to that old Jaeger program poster, and she already knew her decision.

 _The PPDC it is,_ Anna thought, and she looked back to the screen once more. The cameras following Elsa and Ranger Cortes were filming their backs as they walked away from the interview. Her heart grew just a tiny heavier, and she knelt down to take a hold of the mop she'd dropped. _Maybe if I do this, you'll finally want to know me again._


	3. Construction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath of her fight with Elsa, Anna stews in her anger while Kristoff attempts to drag her out of it.

Anna slouched over the metal railing, staring moodily down at the construction workers some sixty feet below. She knew she was pouting, doing her best impression of spoiled teenager rather than the badass Ranger she _actually_ was - whether Elsa understood that or not - but talking to her sister hadn't exactly panned out. 

Sure, there had actually been _less_ yelling than Anna had expected to do, but neither had she really been expecting those frozen walls to flicker just momentarily and show... well, human emotion. Anna's _justified_ anger had flickered, dying down to hot, bitter embers in her chest. It was a major change from the roaring inferno she'd barely been able to control before.

"What am I going to do?" Anna asked herself, letting her head thump against her crossed arms a couple of times, listening to the work going on below. 

They were assembling the unnamed jaeger down there, the whole repairs and construction bay swarming with workers and heavy machinery. The sound of welding, metal clanging against metal and the warning beeps of the small trucks filled the whole Corona Shatterdome with a constant din. It gave off a sense of activity and purpose, and Anna wished she could take a little comfort from it herself. 

That jaeger down there was what Elsa seemed so hellbent on keeping her from, even when Anna had no desire to be protected and sheltered anymore.

 _Not that she did much in the way of protecting me from the world anyway,_ Anna thought with a sigh. _No, she just ran off and now expects me to listen when she plays the big sister card._

Her wrist still ached from where Elsa had knocked her grasp away, and Anna rubbed the muscles lightly. It hadn't really seemed like a big thing, especially when she'd been in the heat of an argument, but apparently the strike had been hard enough to _bruise_.

The continual rejection from Elsa was what hurt the most about it, though. She'd thought that joining the Jaeger Program would go some way to fixing whatever had gone wrong between them. She thought that maybe, if Elsa hadn't been able to deal with a sister, she might have been able to deal professionally with another Ranger.

Ever since Anna had enrolled at the Academy, there had been a near continual list of distractions and walls thrown up between her as Elsa had practically _run_. 

_Maybe I just made some horrible mistake and didn't realise it,_ Anna wondered moodily, tilting her head to look down at the stylised head of the new Mark IV jaeger. Blue glass seemed to cover most of its head, probably in an attempt to improve the field of view. 

_What would we have named it, if we'd gotten the chance to pilot it together?_

"Hm..." a voice said from behind her, and Anna jolted to alertness with a started yell. Her heart racing _unreasonably_ from the surprise, she glared over her shoulder at Kristoff. 

"That face," he continued, squinting and raising a finger as if trying to determine something. "Either your sister is getting you down again, or you exhausted your stash of hot chocolate."

Anna exhaled sharply to the side, tucking her wayward hair behind her ear again. How did he always know?

"You confronted her, didn't you." It wasn't a question, and Kristoff gave her a flat, you're-a-trial-just-knowing-you sort of look as he joined her at the railing. 

"What was I meant to do? Just lie down and take it, like I always have?" Now that she wasn't thinking on Elsa exclusively, the flames of her anger roared up inside her. "I'm sick of being a doormat for her when it makes no difference at all."

Kristoff raised his hands, open and wide. "Woah there, I'm not the one you're angry with."

He had a point, damn him. Why was he always so down to earth about everything? Sometimes he made her feel so... unreasonable. 

"Okay, fine. You might have a point." Anna sighed, looking back down to the jaeger, its armour painted in greys and blues. She swallowed. She just couldn't seem to be angry with Elsa in her presence, and that was messing with her head more than it had a right to. "When we were kids, even then she wanted nothing to do with me." 

"Arendelle was pretty tough on her," Kristoff said, and Anna didn't miss the way his tone was carefully non-committal. 

"Yeah, but she didn't exactly care how if affected anyone else, either." Anna knew that it was petty to be mad about things that had happened so long ago, but the image of Elsa's closed door felt like it was engraved on the backs of her eyelids. "I lost our home too, you know."

"Why does it have to be her, then? Seems like it's more grief for the both of you than it's worth..." Kristoff trailed off, sounding thoughtful. "You got decent scores with Lilo, right? It's not like Elsa is your only option."

"Yeah, but 'decent' doesn't exactly hold out so well against a Kaiju! I mean, just a month ago -"

"I know what happened to Herc and Meg," Kristoff cut in quickly, his expression slightly ill. 

"I _felt_ it in there, Kristoff. When I started in on Elsa in the Kwoon, we had something incredible going on, even if we've been apart for all these years." It was a strange give and take. She'd started out cautious, even a little irritated with her sister, but then it had begun to flow. She had been able to predict Elsa's strikes well before her sister had even moved, and she knew it had been the same for Elsa. The Drift compatibility had been _textbook_. 

"Is it really so wrong if I want to keep some of that?" Anna asked, her shoulders sagging just a little. 

Kristoff was quiet for a long moment. "I'm not so sure I'm an expert on that."

Anna looked down at her hands, and she grasped the railing tightly. She really had to force herself to speak. "I guess I just really want her back _now_ , even if it's not going to... not going to change what happened. She just doesn't want me."

The raw emotion in Anna's chest was both angry and painful, but what was she going to do about it? It just got worse and worse every time she considered it. 

"Want to hit the gym a bit later?" she asked, as the silence lapsed. Exhausting herself would probably help her sleep that night, anyway. She'd rather not spend any more time lying on her bed, stewing over the situation with Elsa. 

"I think food is first," Kristoff said with a grin, shaking his head. As if to prove a point, his stomach growled. 

Anna let a smile lift the corner of her mouth. "I'm not exactly hungry."

"That's a shame, because me? I am _famished_ and I am not going to skip dinner again." Kristoff patted her shoulder, jerking his head towards the walkway. "C'mon. Leave this pile of nuts and bolts for a while. Crazy as it is, maybe things will look better on a full stomach?"

"You're just saying that," Anna accused him lightly, and he shrugged expressively. She allowed him to pull her away from her unhappy vigil by the jaeger, away from the noise of construction and into the activity of the Shatterdome.


	4. Publicity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Elsa signed up with the PPDC, she hadn't expected that being a Ranger would involve so many publicity stunts.

The night air was freezing, even though winter wasn't to arrive just yet, and Elsa couldn't help but shiver at the cold. She tucked her rapidly numbing hands under her elbows, trying to conserve some heat, and her breath puffed visibly before her lips.

She'd held out longer than she'd expected to, her walls stacked high as she pretended to smile for the cameras and make small talk with whoever wandered over. Eventually, when the press of people and questions and _noise_ had become too much… Without a word, she'd slipped through the front doors, taking a seat at one of the benches out the front of the hall, and she'd watched the twilight sky deepen into night. 

Elsa really didn't mind the cold, and she counted the stars as they began to emerge. The view was faded by all of Anchorage's light pollution, and in spite of herself, she missed the spectacular night skies of Kodiak Island. 

_Of all the strange things to miss of the Academy, it's the night sky that gets me the most._ Elsa couldn't help but let the sigh escape her lips. 

Even though the skies weren't quite the best view, sitting in the quiet and cold had eased the persistent feeling of tension in her chest. A Kaiju she could apparently deal with, now that she had Dancing Spectre's impossible power to back her up. The media and PR stunts… all the training in the world hadn't prepared her for the intensity of the limelight she'd inadvertently agreed to. 

_The interception of Incisor was all over the news, Esmeralda and I had to do all those interviews… Anna probably knows all about what I've been up to, then._

Elsa really had no excuse for keeping it from her, nothing that people could easily understand. 

_"Don't you care about her? Don't you want to see how proud she'd be of you?"_

It all felt very simple when they weren't the ones dealing with… _everything._ They didn't understand how dangerous Elsa had been before she left, how she'd hurt Anna… With Arendelle and Hellfire blazing in her head whenever she stopped actively trying to forget, how was she meant to stop that from corrupting the only good thing in her life worth protecting? 

She slipped her phone from her pocket, flicking through her inbox robotically with numb fingers. It was just the usual notices and memorandums, and business as usual for a Ranger. The account was cold and impersonal, even if it was meant to be hers, but in the drafts folder it was an entirely different story. 

There were dozens of half-finished, stilted, awkward and ultimately _unsent_ emails stored in her drafts. They'd become especially prevalent when Elsa had been suffering her way through the brutal training in the Academy, when she'd just needed somebody to talk to and she'd feverishly told Anna every positive or toxic thought on her mind. 

She'd never quite found the force of will to hit send, to reach out to her sister and explain what had happened. 

Of course, Elsa hadn't been so negligent as to ignore her sister. She'd attempted to keep tabs on her location, and since Anna's latest move to attend a high school in Corona, she'd sent most of her meagre cadet income to ensure that the landlord was looking out for her sister. That practice had continued on past Elsa's graduation from the Academy, when she'd finally become a fully-fledged Ranger with the wage that accompanied the higher rank.

Simply sending money had been a safe option in Elsa's mind. There had had a purposeful distance to it, and even now the idea opening the door to her only remaining family felt like an insurmountable task. 

" _You_ are going to be the PR department's worst nightmare. I can already tell," a familiar voice called out from just behind her. Elsa looked over her shoulder slowly, to where her partner stood in the entrance to the gathering of politicians and reporters. The woman was leaning against the wall, and while she wasn't smiling, Elsa could see that her eyes were amused. 

Come to think of it, her partner looked quite relaxed, which was nothing short of odd. Esmeralda Cortes always settled in some midpoint between easy laughter and quicksilver anger, and given that she hated the PR side just as much as Elsa did, something had to be up. 

"You aren't just realising that now. It's too late to change partners, you know," Elsa told her, and at Esmeralda's low, throaty laugh, she felt the tension seep away once again.

Esmeralda Cortes had been her assigned partner since before they'd both graduated the Academy. They were the team that fought as one with Dancing Spectre, and thanks to the Drift, they knew one another inside out. Esmeralda had seen the very worst of Elsa and her past during their tests. She'd seen the crippling fear that the memories of Arendelle invoked, how heat played with Elsa's mind, how she couldn't stand the smell of cooking meat. She'd seen the anxiety and the suffering, and it might have been humiliating if Elsa herself hadn't seen all the harrowing darkness of Esmeralda's own past. 

Somehow, they'd struck a balance of sharing and concealing that had set them above the other cadets vying for a shot in a jaeger. They understood one another all too clearly - but Elsa knew that they retained their sense of self. 

Esmeralda's memories were not her own - even in the Drift, fighting Incisor in the week just gone, that had been thankfully clear. Though it was difficult, learning how to put some distance between Esmeralda's memories and herself had really helped Elsa begin to manage her own. 

"Maybe there was just something about you that I knew I liked," Esmeralda eventually responded, sounding thoughtful. "Pretty face, a troubled past, living to avenge her lost homeland like some legendary scion…"

"They don't know about my links to Arendelle," Elsa reminded her a little dryly, and Esmeralda actually winked at her. 

_"Yet._ People are going to notice that you're a dead wringer for the last survivor of that city, and they are going to put the pieces together." Esmeralda sighed then, as if she could already feel the spike of dread that statement had provoked. "You don't exactly keep it a secret, given how you went and changed your name." Her smile, generally so quick and defensive, was instead one of easy warmth. 

Even in spite of the Drift, it had taken them some time to become comfortable and understand one another. Elsa herself had found it incredibly difficult to let someone in, to trust they could handle those horrible memories that stalked her every thought. Now that Esmeralda had proven herself more than up to the challenge, she'd allowed more of herself to shine through her iron control. 

Esmeralda had understood, and after a few false starts and rocky moments, things were… better. 

Esmeralda had brought up a valid point, though. Elsa's links to Arendelle were a ticking time bomb she hadn't been expecting to even need to deal with, but given the current press of media, it was a reality she'd need to face. 

She thought back on those dozens of unfinished emails to Anna, and exhaled. She had a lot of things she'd eventually need to face... 

"Maybe I don't want to lock that part of myself away anymore. Perhaps I want them to understand who I am." Elsa pitched her voice light, but it was testing. Even having Drifted with Esmeralda, she couldn't ever be quite sure how her partner's thoughts would fall. 

Esmeralda's smile widened, and Elsa could see that her green eyes were fond. "That is exactly what I'd been so hoping you'd say. I'm not going to be ashamed of my past and heritage if you aren't of yours."

The words were playful, but as always with Esmeralda, there was a subtle layer of seriousness under all the jokes. There was stark cynicism under that fierce, almost seductive mask, and it was a mask. 

It was a defense against closeness, against feeling, and in that she and Elsa were matched. Similarity, painful masks and an echo of shared experience had been how they'd clicked together at the Academy. Their drive to prove themselves bigger than the forces that created them had led to their powerful neural handshake. 

"You aren't going to fool me. You aren't ashamed of your past," Elsa said eventually, and she laughed softly, her breath rising in a mist in the night air. She lightened her tone carefully, raising an eyebrow. "I suppose that may in fact be your point."

"It is my aim to get you housetrained eventually," Esmeralda countered, and her grin had become fierce again. "We'll give the Kaiju hell, you and me."

Elsa didn't say anything to that, but with Esmeralda, she hardly needed to. 

"C'mon. The old dragon will have us grounded for the next year if we don't get back in there and butter up a few more… _politicians."_ Esmeralda emphasised the word, and she gave an exaggerated wince. "The trials and tribulations of Rangers. If only we'd known."

At least Esmeralda managed to keep the politicians thinking and the reporters laughing with her irreverent wit. Elsa only had her reserve and defensive silence, and in spite of years of fitness and combat training, stepping into the limelight again after so long… It felt like that day she'd stepped out of the hospital after Arendelle burned, broken, afraid and nowhere near ready to deal with the media buzz. 

And really, she never had been. 

Esmeralda would be by her side through it all though, and that… while it wasn't much in the way of comfort, it was _something._ Elsa could trust her partner to get her through. She knew that. 

Elsa rose to her feet, nodding. "We go back, and get this whole thing over and done with. It's not for long."

Emeralda rested a hand on her hip, her smile widening as her eyes flickered down to the phone in Elsa's hand.

"Maybe you can try emailing her again tomorrow?" Esmeralda asked, perceptive as ever. She didn't even need to ask who it was for. 

_Tomorrow?_ In spite of herself, Elsa felt conflicted. "Maybe," she said after a moment, carefully non-committal. "One ordeal at a time, though, and we really shouldn't keep Maleficient waiting."

"God. You've got that right." Esmeralda grabbed Elsa firmly by the forearm, her grasp warm and gentle as she left the way back inside.


	5. Drive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elsa has all the reasons in the world to deny Anna the chance to pilot a Jaeger with her.

Elsa lay on her bed in her room, listening to the sound of Anna's heavy, angry steps retreating from her door. She didn't so much as twitch a muscle to go after her, even if equal parts guilt and anger threatened to rise up and choke her. The whole ordeal had drained her, both mentally and physically, and for the time being, she just wanted to retreat to the safety and solitude of her Shatterdome room. 

That had always been the way she'd... dealt... with Anna's questions and confusion, even the cool, dark silence was as lonely as it was soothing. 

Elsa was self-aware enough to realise that she really _should_ have been expecting Anna to force a showdown over their Drift compatibility. Anna was even more hot-headed than she'd observed at the Jaeger Academy, all heart and no subtlety, not when she thought she was in the right. 

Anna simply didn't understand, and based on the psych evaluations Elsa had been given by the Marshall, she wasn't exactly confident her sister would _want_ to. 

Most Rangers had a... fixation. A hang-up. It was what made the ability and control to leave the rabbits alone so _important._

Many felt a strong sense of rage toward the Kaiju and the forces that had created the Breach - that had been what had driven Elsa herself to enlist at the Academy and excel. Others felt like they'd fight the extraterrestrial force better than the current crop of Rangers. Given the current rates of pilot death and extreme damage as the Kaiju pushed the PPDC to its limits, Elsa wasn't sure they weren't justified. 

Fewer joined because they had something to prove - Elsa felt an uncomfortable twinge of guilt as the buzz of her phone vibrated against her thigh again - but Anna was different again. 

From what she'd been able to tell from the Marshall's assessments, Elsa herself was Anna's primary motivator. At first it had been in seeking her approval, in some understandable attempt at reconnecting. When Elsa had then moved to dissuade her sister from embarking on a very dangerous career, Anna's perspective had changed again. 

Anna didn't want to be a Ranger for some lofty ideal or for bitter thoughts of revenge. The cold, hard truth of the matter was that she simply wanted to shove their broken relationship in Elsa's face, to prove that she was no longer a child to be left behind and that she would do as she pleased. 

It didn't seem to matter to Anna that she was pushing something incredibly delicate, fixated on her own desires with not a thought to what she actually _needed_. Elsa had spent years attempting to control and manage her memories of Arendelle as it burned, and no matter how disturbingly good it had felt in the Kwoon Training Room that morning, it didn't change the facts. 

Elsa couldn't trust that Anna wouldn't tear after that rabbit if they Drifted together, that she wouldn't drag them both down into the mire of terror and agonising pain. Elsa had to bear it in her nightmares already, wasn't that enough?

_It's too much to hope that she'll leave me be._ Elsa sighed, staring at the darkened roof. It was probably just a trick of her mind, but she'd never before felt so tired. _She is going to push and push until something gives. I've fought Kaiju and faced more fear than she can imagine. I will not be the one who breaks._

Elsa's phone buzzed again, apparently not to be forgotten. Mutely, she reached down and drew it from her pocket, unhappy when she saw the message preview. 

**you can't ignore me forever, partner**

Elsa's mouth tightened, and she let the phone fall back to the bunk without reading the full message. Of course everything would heap on her now - the mess with Anna was more than enough to keep her occupied for the time being without having to face the force of nature that was her old partner. 

Her stomach growled threateningly, and while Elsa was hardly in a mood to force a fake smile and interact with the other Ranger crews in the Shatterdome, she had take care of herself. She needed to maintain top condition for the next, gruellingly painful stage of partner selection, so despite her reluctance to encounter Anna again, she decided to do the responsible thing.

She swung her legs over the side of the bunk, already in her boots, before shrugging on her old Dancing Spectre jacket and tucking her phone in her pocket again. Head held high and determined to let neither Anna nor Esmeralda get to her, Elsa headed off through the Shatterdome's narrow corridors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops, got a bit sidetracked, what with my entire life getting eaten by the RWBY fandom in the space of about a week and a half. Major thanks to diavenia for giving me a poke over on tumblr!


End file.
